In recent years, a heat-sensitive color-developing paper has come into wide use, as a heat-sensitive recording material for a facscimile.
Such a heat-sensitive color-developing paper as mentioned above usually forms a printed-image thereon in the manner that the paper surface is so heated as to color-develop the heated portion thereof.
The above-described heat-sensitive color-developing papers have had the problems so far that the surface thereof is liable to be discolored by the change on standing after an image is printed and, in particular, that the storage-stability of a printed-image has been deteriorated, for example, the portion other than the printed portion has also been color-developed as same as in the printed portion, when the portion other than the printed portion has been exposed repeatedly to heat or light.
On the other hand, a heat-sensitive transfer-paper has been proposed to serve as a heat-sensitive material having an excellent storage-stability.
Ordinarily, such a heat-sensitive transfer paper comprises the two components, namely, an image-tranfer-recipient paper and a heat-transfer member, each arranged independently. In this ordinary case, the two components are stored in a rolled form, laid one upon another or separated one from another. When using this type of heat-sensitive transfer-paper, a printed-image may be formed on the transfer-image-recipient paper in such a manner that a colorant containing layer of the heat-transfer member is heated to fuse and the heat-transfer member is then brought into pressure-contact with the tansfer-image recipient paper, so that an image in the portion to be transferred may be transferred to the image-recipient paper.
Such a heat-sensitive transfer-paper, different from heat-sensitive color-paper, requires two composing materials (transfer recipient paper and heat transfer material) in order to get a recording paper having printed images. Therefore, it has such problems as that, for example, control and check must be needed for both of transfer recipient paper and heat transfer material, as the heat-transfer material is composed of support and a colorant containing layer and the foregoing support becomes completely useless after being printed so that the cost of heat transfer material is expensive, as originally the transfer recipient paper and the heat transfer material are separated and the heat transfer material is a thin sheet so that wrinkles are easy to be made on transfer recipier paper and heat transfer material when printing is done while rolled heat-sensitive transfer paper is wound therefore it is liable that printing order goes out of order, troubles occur in winding operation of heat-sensitive transfer paper or running of heat-sensitive transfer paper cannot be done stably.
As a commonly-used heat-sensitive recording material, an ink ribbon having a thermosoftening colorant containing layer on a support is used. In the case of this ink ribbon, the foregoing ink ribbon is contacted to the transfer recipient material, for example paper, and heat is applied imagewisely so that a heat-fusing thermosoftening colorant layer is transfered onto a recording material to form a printing image thereon.
In this ink ribbon, too, the support becomes useless after being printed. Therefore, the cost of the ink ribbon is expensive.
Besides, on the other hand, the foregoing heat-sensitive transfer paper or the foregoing heat-sensitive color-developing paper are used as barcode use or label use. In these case, not only image preservation but also abrasion resistance becomes problem. If the foregoing heat-sensitive transfer paper is used, abrasion resistance is bad, and if the foregoing heat-sensitive color-developing paper is used, both of image preservation and abrasion resistance are bad.